I would like to share a civilization concept for the Swiss (representing the Old Swiss Confederacy, roughly 13th to 16th century). Historically, Swiss pikemen revolutionized medieval infantry warfare (the Gewalthaufen), successfully defeating heavy cavalry and expanding their confederacy through fierce defense and tactical discipline.
Here is how they could be integrated into Age of Empires II: DE.
The Swiss
Infantry and Defensive Civilization
Civilization Bonuses
Spearman line upgrades are free (Highlights their historical mastery of the pike).
Villagers +10% HP per Age starting in Feudal Age (Reflects the rugged, resilient mountain population).
Outposts cost no stone and have +2 LOS (Excellent alpine surveillance).
Murder Holes and Herbal Medicine are free upon reaching the Castle Age.
Team Bonus
Barracks work 10% faster in Castle Age, 20% faster in Imperial Age.
Unique Unit
Reisläufer (Infantry): A heavily armored pikeman unit trained at the Castle. Unlike the standard Halberdier, the Reisläufer deals high base damage, has bonus armor against pierce attacks, and retains a strong attack bonus against cavalry. Extremely potent in mass formations, but expensive in gold.
Unique Technologies
Castle Age – Eidgenossenschaft (Cost: 300F, 200G): Infantry units gain +1/+1 armor when fighting within the Line of Sight of a friendly Castle or Town Center.
Imperial Age – Gewalthaufen (Cost: 700F, 500G): Spearman line and Reisläufer move 10% faster and attack 15% faster.
Missing Tech Tree Options (Balancing)
To prevent them from being overpowered, they would lack top-tier offensive mobile options and heavy siege:
Archery Range: Lacks Cavalry Archer, Heavy Cav Archer, and Parthian Tactics.
Stable: Lacks Paladin, Camels, and Battle Elephants.
Siege Workshop: Lacks Siege Ram and Bombard Cannon.
Blacksmith: Lacks Plate Mail Armor (relying on their high base stats and unique tech instead).
Architecture & Language
Architecture: Central European (similar to Teutons/Goths).
Audio/Voice lines: A mix of Old High German, Swiss German, and Medieval Romance dialects to reflect the multicultural cantons.
I would love to hear the community’s and developers’ thoughts on this! Would this fit the current meta, and what changes would you suggest to fine-tune the balance?
One thing to consider is the mounted Xbow. To the point that even the Hegemony mods Helvetian civ had their mounted Xbows have some bonuses. It would be interesting if they had Parthian tactics for theirs since there was a lot of mountain hit and run alpine warfare instead of or maybe alongside Cranequine tech
This is Ethiopian and Halb was removed for being too big a spike.
Either worthless because it’s like 2 HP because you forgot to get loom first or it’s just 4 because you got it after. You could easily go for 5 per age and it’s okay. Or just a flat 10 from the start!
Literally Ethiopia team bonus.
Teutons.
Worse Goths!
Underwhelming when it could just be a permanent 1/1 in all circumstances. After all this bonus is supposed to circumvent a loss of Plate Mail but… meh.
You’re stacking too many spear bonuses.
I think this civ is not only kinda 1 note but its got so many repeat bonuses that it wants to be a worse Ethiopians civ. Cmon it’s not like these are recent civs youre mixing in. These civs are at least a decade old!
It has no real eco bonus and no power spike in Feudal meaning it’s gonna have a hard time in most open maps
+5 HP/age (including Dark?) sounds like a great idea.
Personally, I would give them this but without Heavy.
A few things worth mentioning: them would have completely upgraded Arbs, Skirms, Hussars, Siege Onagers, and Heavy Scorpions. This would be incredibly powerful with their infantry.
I recommend taking out Thumb Ring/Arbalester and the third archer armor upgrade, Bloodlines, and Siege Onager/Siege Engineers.
An economic bonus would be a great idea.
Also, you forgot the university, navy, and eco techs.
It looks like it’s super not strong. A lack of an Eco bonus means you gotta abuse the extra bit points for tower rushes and hope it works. the rest of the bonuses are recycled verbatim from other civs so they gotta be changed no questions asked!
I would rather have a swiss mercenary inspired in your resilaufer as a regional unit for at least franks, teutons and italians .. if we are going to add another german civ i would only support either austrian, babarians or sawbians (but only one of them) to represent souther germans (we already have saxons in northern germany and teutonics could be either a general germany or have a rework to make them represent the monastic order in the baltic)
now that I think about it.. it could work as a final dlc for europe
rename slavs as ruthenians, add a new slavs generic civ inspired on croatia and serbia, add swabians insparied in southern germans, give teutons a minor rework adding the teutonic mounted knight from the campaign (like a unit upgrade for knights)
I would have love vandals in the rome dlc… with a campaing for both majorian and genseric (? sry, I can’t remember if that was the vandal king that sacked Rome, I’m bad with names)
but in a hipotetical german and slavic dlc… maybe it could work, ofc not as a civ inspired on southern germans
I think the next dlc should be a rework of the sarracens… maybe they could add vandals there too (as they had their kingom in africa) or use vandals as an inspirations for new unique techs for a new civ in tunisia
Serbs and Croats had different military traditions (not to mention a significant percentage of them hate each other’s guts), they should be done as two separate civs. Add Albanians with Skangedbeg and Vlachs so that Vlad finally has the correct civ.
As for “Teuton split”, my idea looks like this:
Gaeseric (sp) he grew up in the Iberian peninsula as Franks goths and Romans and the people of the Spanishpeninsul closed in. His people took to the straight of Gibraltar and alongside Alans (whom would also be a fantastic civ for a barbarians expansion) who became allies of circumstance decided to sack Carthage after the Romans betrayed a hiring agreement. But they didn’t just sack it, they took over, stole the Roman ships and sacked Rome itself. Pope Leos words to the Vandals can be inferred to be similar to the ones he told Attila but… yea they didn’t listen.
Then Byzantine navies tried and the Vandal navies figured sending unmanned ships set on fire was an excellent way to fight close knit vessels.
And then they survived controlling the Mediterranean with camels and many a cavalry until the I think mid 500s when the Byzantines defeated them.
short duration but certainly a civ with unit flavor you don’t see many other places. A European tech tree with camels and Dromons and a focus in their navy on demo ship dominance… it could work
TBH, I don’t like the idea of Croatians a civ… they spent a lot of their medieval history as vassals of Constantinopla or under a personal union with Hungary… I just don’t like short lived kingdoms (like the burgundians that technically were a vassal of france and tries to represent just 2 or 3 generation of dukes).
That does not mean that they can’t be represented in the game, I just think croatians should not be as a civ but rather a unique tech or unique/regional unit for the magyars or byzantines